Okay, so last night I had one of my first lucid dreams...kinda. I did know that I was dreaming, but I still felt like I was not fully concious, like still half dream me or something. Also, it wasn't very clear or lifelike, more dream like. I did a reality check but the room I was in was too dark so I couldn't see the results. I tried demanding "Clarity now" and it worked, but only a little bit. I found my desk in my room and tried to touch it, but instead of feeling the desk normally my hand started to get the intense tingling feeling that happens when a limb looses circulation, goes to sleep, then wakes back up again. I tried to touch it again and still got the weird tingling feeling, but also got just a teeny feel of how the desk should feel. I walked downstairs and saw my dog, so I tried to pet her. I could just barely feel her fir. After that I completely lost lucidity but the dream continued. I had another dream similar to this last week, more dream like than reality and when I went to touch something it only registered slightly. Has anyone else had this problem, or am I just weird? Does anyone have any ideas on how to make them more lifelike and less dreamlike or how to solve the touching stuff problem? Thanks for reading this, by the way.

Can only speak from my experience, but I have dreams that are pretty much identical to what you describe. For me, these kind of dreams most often occur when I'm not in a very deep sleep, a lot of times after 7 to 8 hours of sleep. By that point, it's pretty much over for me. But there are other times when who knows what causes them. When I first started doing WILD, I would often keep myself from entering a deep sleep and these kinds of dreams were common. It's also been a sort of first stage for me and dreams can start this way and then quickly shift into full color, hi-def and very touchable worlds. That's a very cool experience to have: Things start off in darkness, fuzzy black and white, then snap into super-real mode in a split second. Your mind hits of the back of the seat from the acceleration.

So the bottom line is: keep at it and know that dreams can get mind-blowing real.

Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world? Morpheus

Rubbing the hands can wake a person up when they are in a very light LD state, doing any movement (or even not moving so its hard to know what to do) can wake a person fully up when in a light state.

Seeing you managed to thou walk to your dog, pat him and do other things like that without it waking you up, it is probably unlikely that rubbing your hands together would of woken you up and may of been more likely to stabilise you and allow you to feel your dream better. You need to use some technique to stabilize your dream better to make it clearer etc.

If a room is dark.. try to find the lightswitch and turn it on in your dream world. If there is something wrong with the switch.. manifest the light on in some way (you tried that a bit with doing the clarity now thing). I just click my fingers hard and order by will alone the light on and get it on like magic. Being able to see better in the dream rather then being in the dark, would of helped you to stay in this dream more, so I suggest that that more should of tried to be done to get that light on. So think about the ways you could of done this.. You need to bring all your senses as fully as possible, into your LD.

Trying to pat your dog and touch things.. that was the right kind of thing to try to be doing, involve yourself in your LD as much as you can, touching things etc. Unfortunately in this case I think the lack of touch sensation (something you were trying to fix) and the darkness making it hard to focus on surroundings and details there, let you down.

You seem to have been thinking very well in your LD (something many beginners find hard), it was a good one of the first LDs attempt.